Mote sheds light on Turtle Nesting, Longboat revises turtle ordinance

Mote Marine Laboratory documented the first three local sea turtle nests of 2017 — two on Sunday, April 30, and one on Monday, May 1 — in Venice, Florida.

Mote scientists, interns and more than 250 volunteers in Mote’s Sea Turtle Patrol monitor nesting activity on Longboat Key through Venice every day of sea turtle nesting season, which officially runs from May 1-Oct. 31 in southwest Florida.

The first three nests were laid by loggerhead sea turtles, a threatened species protected under federal law. Loggerheads are the most common species on southwest Florida nesting beaches, followed by endangered green sea turtles. In recent years, Sarasota County has also hosted a handful of endangered Kemp’s ridleys, among the smallest and rarest sea turtles.

Longboat Key just revised its sea turtle ordinance to make it more stringent.

If beachgoers store furniture on the beach store or bring them back to the dune line not into the vegetation that’s protected,

Removing furniture each night is one of the several new rules under Longboat Key’s revamped sea turtle protection ordinance. New lighting rules are also in place

Code enforcement will give it out warnings but if the violation isn’t corrected fines can start at $250 dollars a day, a second violation is $500 dollars a day.

Mote research has shown that nest numbers have increased recently on local beaches, with several record-breaking years in the past decade. In 2016 Mote reported 4,588 nests on Longboat Key through Venice — an all-time record for Mote.